• Jesus@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Weekly explosions on a test pad? No. None of the integrated tests have exploded on the pad. (Edit: like this one, which did)

    The last starship on the pad was mid March. It made it up, but fell apart during reentry. Before that, IFT 2 was in Nov 23, and the exploded 8 min up. IFT 1 was over a year ago, and that only made it 4 min after lift off.

    • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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      6 months ago

      Like you say, nobody is making this explosion out to be a deadly emergency but it also probably doesn’t inspire confidence when the company fails so much more often than it succeeds. Starship engines have been “unexpectedly” exploding for years.

      • Infinite@lemmy.zip
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        6 months ago

        Fails more often than it succeeds? That’s… not even close to accurate.

        They’ve already had more than 50 successful missions this year.

        Testing doesn’t count as a failure, it counts as test data.

        • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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          6 months ago

          I don’t think exploding was part of the test. I don’t think being investigated by the FAA in 2020 for failure to listen to warnings about unintended shockwave damage was part of their tests. I don’t think losing an entire rocket to a booster explosion last year was part of the test.

          I think their tests are throwing things at the stainless steel wall and hoping it sticks.